Senator from Illinois and advocate for the popular sovereignty choice in the Kansas slavery debate.

For millennia, the Great Plains of North America was inhabited by nomadic Native Americans.

In 1802, Spain returned most of the land to France via the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso, although the former country kept title to about 7,500 square miles.

In 1803, most of the land for modern day Kansas was acquired by the United States from France as part of the 828,000 square mile Louisiana Purchase for 2.83 cents per acre.

The pro- and anti-slavery settlers held great animosity towards one another, leading to many events, such as the drafting of the Lecompton Constitution (which would have admitted Kansas into the Union as a slave state), the Wakarusa War (1855), the Sack of Lawrence (1856), Battle of Black Jack (1856), and the Lawrence Massacre (1863).

Much of its northern boundary is defined by the Kansas River, which flows through Lawrence and provides hydropower at the Bowersock Dam.

[14][15] Douglas County has a political history more typical of Vermont and Maine than of the Great Plains.

It voted for the Republican candidate in every presidential election between 1864 and 1960, except in 1912 when the GOP was mortally divided and the county supported Progressive Theodore Roosevelt.

During this time, Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Michael Dukakis in 1988 were the only Democrats to come reasonably close to carrying the county.

However, the growing transformation of Lawrence into a liberal academic center has pulled the county into the Democratic column in every election since 1992.

In 2016 and 2020, for instance, Donald Trump turned in the worst showings on record for a Republican in the county without the presence of a credible third-party challenger on the ballot.

The county overwhelmingly voted "No" on the 2022 Kansas abortion referendum, an anti-abortion ballot measure, by 81% to 19%, outpacing its support of Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential election.

The Operations Division includes a dive team, a patrol, and a warrants unit.

[21] Major events in the county include the Maple Leaf Festival in Baldwin City every third full weekend in October.

The city of Lawrence is considered governmentally independent and is excluded from the census figures for the townships.